


we'll bruise the sky with our names

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Gift Fic, I'm giving them a happy ending for a change, M/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, movie plot points mentioned, over use of the word "forever"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 18:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2397839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forever is hard work. </p>
<p>But it's worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll bruise the sky with our names

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jujitsuelf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujitsuelf/gifts).



> For the elf lady. For putting up with me for over a year now. On the 17th of September last year, she made the mistake of finding my email address that I'd left lurking around this site and sending me an email. Here's hoping she never actually regrets that. I figured the daily (barring periods of no internet) emails deserved some kind of recognition.  
> So this is "thank you" for all the emails, all the laughs and all the support over the last year. And this is hope that it doesn't fade out any time soon.

Jensen’s niece Beth asked him once what forever meant. It was one of the times he’d followed Jensen home while they were on leave. Beth had been five at the time, with lopsided pigtails because her uncle kept tugging on the left one, and Cougar hadn’t really smiled when he’d answered, because it was a serious question and he didn’t feel like sugar coating it, or being cynical enough to say there was no such thing as forever. 

He’d simply looked over at where Jensen had wedged himself behind the TV cabinet trying to sort out Jessica’s new Blu Ray player and had answered the best he could. 

“Forever is those things that you never want to let go of.” 

  


It turns out forever was a lot harder work than initially thought. 

Forever was nights spent watching over Jensen while he was hacking. Or failing to pick up girls at bars. Or challenging Roque to video games and then having to duck projectile controllers when Roque was convinced that Jensen had cheated. 

Forever was what it felt like when Jensen was loaned out to another special ops team and didn’t come back when they did. The not knowing nearly killed Cougar. The searching and continuously coming up with nothing. Forever was the moment between when the team commander finally agreed to talk and actually told them where they’d lost Jensen. 

Forever was sitting sentinel outside Jensen’s hospital room after they’d found him and brought him home. It felt longer than all the times any of them had spent in hospital before. It felt longer than Cougar thought he had patience for. But then forever turned into trying to keep Jensen out of trouble while he hobbled around on crutches, wearing an eye patch in lieu of the bandages the nurses kept trying to apply over his left eye and insisting on getting up to all sorts of mischief. 

Forever was watching a helicopter explode and all the tiny lives it had contained burn. It was the hours spent trekking out of the jungle with the smell of the burning wreck strong in his sinuses and the silence that hung over them. It was ever word that Jensen didn’t say. All the words he needed to hear, but couldn’t ask the techie to say. 

Forever was waiting for Jensen to come into view when he was inside the Goliath building, worrying that he wouldn’t get around to where Cougar could cover him in time. Worrying that the last time he would have seen Jensen would have been early that morning and he hadn’t said a word to him before he left. 

Forever was watching Aisha shoot Jensen and the time after that it took to get him stitched up again. 

Forever was thinking they’d caught Max only to walking to a trap, it was kneeling at gunpoint and that moment where Cougar wondered if it was finally going to all be over. If he’d die without having told Beth that forever was so much more than he’d originally said. If he’d die without ever telling Jensen all the things he’d been putting off saying. 

Forever wasn’t the fight that followed. But forever was the stretch Hummer ride away from the docks and Jensen’s colourful recapping of everything that had happened. Forever was the silence that followed to first mention of Roque’s name. 

Forever was watching Jensen at his niece’s soccer game, watching him unable to stay out of trouble for even one day. 

Forever was hard work. It was rarely easy and it was seldom fair. But there were moments, like watching Jensen wedge behind a TV cabinet setting up a Blu Ray player, or years later, sitting together on the couch in Jess’ house, watching movies, that made forever seem like not nearly long enough. 

Forever was looking over at Jensen and realising all those things he’d worried about never getting to tell him, he didn’t need to worry about, because Jensen already knew. It was the way their fingers tangled together and he felt like he could hold on forever. 

Forever was somewhere between hard work and easy going. It was midway between too long and not nearly long enough. Forever was never letting go. 

  


And it was worth all the pain it took to achieve it. 


End file.
